Thursday, June 01, 2000
Theologian says freedom at risk
Kung worries about Vatican strictures, especially on colleges
By Ben L. Kaufman
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Vatican efforts to enforce theological conformity are threatening the “new freedom” enjoyed by American Catholics during the three decades since the Second Vatican Council, Swiss theologian Hans Kung warned Wednesday.
That freedom is one of the “great achievements” of American Catholicism, he said, especially in Catholic colleges where theologians studied and debated church teachings with a hitherto rare academic competence and honesty.
“The danger is that now we have again the church and freedom divided,” Father Kung said in an interview at Rockdale Temple. “The choice is medieval canon law or the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
He was at the Amberley Village synagogue to receive an honorary degree during the Hebrew Union College commencement.
His warning focused on Vatican rules that would put Catholics teaching theology under the authority of local bishops.
Father Kung, a priest of the Diocese of Basle, already has felt the sting of papal disapproval.
Leaving his ordination intact, the Vatican stripped Father Kung of his authority to teach as a Catholic theologian in 1979 at the University of Tuebingen.
Church authorities said he went overboard in questioning the dogma of papal infallibility.
Today, he remains at Tuebin gen as professor emeritus.
Will Catholic theologians lose their intellectual integrity if required to have their local bishop's permission to teach?
“It depends on whether you have some courageous people and collective action is the best. The individual always loses.”
Father Kung said American Catholics have done this before. Despite Vatican disapproval, he said, local bishops allow altar girls despite Vatican calls for altar boys only.
He also hoped American cardinals would use their influence to mitigate the worst of the new Vatican demands on theologians, as they did after Vatican II when they won eased annulment procedures for the laity.
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